Please note: This story contains a graphic medical image.
A mum has revealed she nearly died after she caught sepsis and gangrene from a hot tub – all because of a shaving cut.
Hayley Thomas, 46, accidentally nicked her right leg with a razor just hours before climbing into a friend’s hot tub with her son Justin John, five. She woke up the next day covered head to toe in painful red rashes and said her skin felt like it was on fire.
She went to an out-of-hours doctor’s appointment and started a course of antibiotics, but it wasn’t until she developed large oozing sores over her entire body – nine days after the hot tub dip – that serious concerns were raised and she was rushed to hospital.
A biopsy revealed Thomas had contracted sepsis from a bacteria in the hot tub water, which entered her bloodstream through her 2mm shaving cut.
[Read More: These are the symptoms of sepsis you need to know]
As Thomas’s skin began to fall off, doctors prepared her for the increasing possibility that they would have to cut out large areas of infected skin in theatre.
In a last attempt to stop this, doctors gave her antibiotics for 21 days. It saved her limbs and, after three weeks in hospital, she was finally allowed home.
But she has been left permanently scarred with discoloured patches of skin over her body where her sores had been.
The single mum-of-one from Swansea has vowed never to get into another hot tub – and is speaking out to warn others of the dangers.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I’ve always been fit and healthy – I don’t smoke, I eat healthy and exercise regularly. To hear I could die because of a tiny shaving cut on my leg after relaxing in a hot tub was just unbelievable, and yet there I was.
“I’ll never step foot in a hot tub again, and it scares me whenever I see people getting in them, especially children. My son was in the hot tub with me that day, and if he had caught that infection, he wouldn’t be here today. I’m just so lucky that it was me who fell ill and not my little man.”
Thomas was enjoying a dip with pals in her friend’s hot tub on a sunny bank holiday weekend in May 2019. Just hours before donning her swimming costume, she’d shaved her legs in preparation, and suffered a tiny cut, but thought nothing of it.
But when she woke up the next morning covered in painful red rashes, she knew something was wrong.
“My skin was on fire from the minute I woke up and I couldn’t understand what had happened,” Thomas said. “I hoped it would get better with time, but by the end of the bank holiday weekend, my whole body had been ravaged by these rashes.
“I’d received a text from JJ’s school a few days before about an outbreak of chickenpox, so I immediately thought I must have shingles.”
The mum phoned NHS Direct for help after sores developed underneath her arms, and after attending an out-of-hours doctor’s appointment on Monday evening, she started a course of antibiotics.
Her condition worsened over the next week until her entire body was covered in large oozing sores. She went to A&E but, after waiting behind patients deemed more urgent, she left and phoned NHS Direct to speak to a doctor.
She was immediately told on the phone to drive straight to Morriston Hospital, which she did after dropping her son off at her parents’ house. A biopsy revealed she had sepsis after contracting a pseudomonas infection in the hot tub through her shaving cut.
Pseudomonas infections come from waterborne bacteria, which grows well in temperatures between 25′C and 32′C – the common temperatures at which hot tubs are heated in homes.
When entering an open wound, the bacteria can result in the skin turning gangrenous, oozing fluid from large sores across the body as the infection travels through the bloodstream.
If not treated quickly, the infection can lead to septicaemia, a life threatening condition where the blood poisoning can result in multiple organ failure and death, if not treated with antibiotics immediately.
Thomas’s skin started to fall off of her body, and doctors said surgeons were on standby to cut out large areas of gangrenous skin from her infected limbs if the antibiotics did not improve her condition.
With sores covering her arms, two sores on her right leg and one sore on her left leg, all four of her limbs were at risk if the wounds took a turn for the worse.
She said: “I couldn’t even process what they were saying. When they said I was on standby for theatre, I didn’t really think about the fact that that meant they’d be cutting away parts of my body.
“I just begged them to save my life. I would have done anything to not die in that hospital bed.”
After a week of being monitored, Thomas was stable enough to be transferred to Singleton Hospital for treatment from the dermatology department. Her wounds were photographed for medical training purposes as her case of pseudonomas was the most extreme that the specialists had ever witnessed, she said.
As her sores began to heal, there was only one person she was desperate to see – her five year old son Justin John. “I just had to see him. I’m a single parent, and my heart breaks to think of leaving my little boy without a mummy.
Two months after the ordeal, her skin has healed well, but the red patches of skin have left her with a reminder of what she went through.
“I nearly lost my life, and the fact I’m still here has left me feeling so thankful for every single day I get to spend with my son,” she said.
“Every moment that I’m alive watching him grow up is more precious now than ever, and I’ll never take that for granted again.”